The Seasons

The star that looks awry upon the sinner
orients the temple. Mother Kate places
the wafer in my hands, a story
about a body. I read insects
worldwide are facing Krefeld-level
declines. Krefeld is in Germany, I
read. Its insects declined. Tigers
and polar bears get all the press.
In high school I jumped the barrier
at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to reach
through the bars to pet a panther. He
was sleeping and woke with a small growl
of surprise. I hadn’t read Rilke. Now,
I wouldn’t want to bother a panther.
Let them out, let them eat people.
Which brings us back to the Eucharist.
A fly alit upon the wafer, is my point.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
A spider spies the fly
with David Hedison’s head
just before the rock
squashes them.
The consubstantiation
of Jeff Goldblum
in Cronenberg’s remake
is slicker. I thought,
in my childhood,
as a child. I got lost in this
hypostasis. If there’s one thing I know
I can’t think of it at the moment.
Wait, I know Gram Parsons’s friends
stole his body after his overdose
by posing as morticians
at LAX. They were so nervous
they drove the hearse
they’d borrowed from Gram’s
assistant’s girlfriend—
it was the 70s—
into the side of a hangar
right in front of a cop. But
the cop waved them on—it
was the 70s—and they lit out
for Joshua Tree, where they doused
Gram in gas and sparked a Bic.
My friends would blow
the heist somehow
but if I ever die,
and I probably will,
I want to be propped
against a dumpster
in Phoenicia, New York,
for bears to eat. Not slathered
in DEET for once. The black-legged
tick sure ain’t in decline. Well,
it’s not an insect. I hate
very few of nature’s people.
That tick’s at the top of the list.
The weedy species survive.
I like deer OK, but if you’ve seen
a trillion, you’ve seen ’em all.